Build Your Own Language!

My cheapest hobby is collecting random interesting words that I find when digging into the etymology of modern vocabulary, sometimes fiddling with them to make them look part of a cohesive yet fictional language for that fantasy RPG campaign kicking around my head or that Star Trek fan fiction I might someday write.

I very soon realized that I wanted to keep track of my notes in something more than a spreadsheet, which lead me to discover all manner of useful tools for designing and documenting constructed languages.

Whether crafting some entirely new tongue for fiction, or as a way to keep track of different common phrases in other languages that you want to use to give your roleplaying characters some extra pizzazz, there are quite a number of different kinds of tools to help with organization.

The first one that I came across in my initial casual search was Vulgarlang. I like this website because it has a way to create a custom language based on the sounds you want to appear in it. Unfortunately, I already had many words that I wanted to keep, and I discovered that adding to the dictionary is more difficult than I'd hoped. The upgraded versions might make the process easier, but I haven't experimented with them because I haven't justified the monetary or time expense to myself yet.

The next database/language construction site I found was ConWorkShop. I love how robust the features are, including the option to program autogenerated pronunciation and inflections. It also works on my iPad and on my desktop, and it has a busy Discord community. Unfortunately, each word can only have one definition, and adding custom definitions is tricky. My wordlist became bloated with duplicate words with subtly different definitions. Moreover, the ability to import a spreadsheet was broken when I tried it a few years ago, though it does a decent job with exporting.

I have a couple more recommendations that I'm hoping to share in the future, but these are good baselines to start a constructed linguistic journey. As we say on Vela III, Bon voyage!

-- Nikki Vrtis